Jax/Strategy
Skill usage * When laning, is an excellent zoner when in the brush, because his - combo enables heavy harassment with a lot of pressure. Be careful as these two abilities drain a lot of mana. * can use to leap into the fray of a fight or make a quick escape when necessary due to the fact that can towards a friendly unit. You can use to maximize your burst potential when using . can also be used right before to lead to an instant stun. * is most effective when used as quickly as possible after a basic attack. This, in addition to granting the bonus magic damage from , effectively doubles base damage output for that attack. Since it is still another attack, it also counts toward building up and passive, so those are accrued faster by using this technique as well. * While engaging with seems to be a safer option, activating it after you take some damage can bait your opponent in focus-firing at you, thus mitigating more damage and may causes your enemies to be over-committed in attempting to kill you. * Activating right before a fight will increase your resistance to both physical and magical damage. ** Note that has a rather short duration of 8 seconds and a cooldown of 80 seconds. usually doesn't need it in a 1v1. Save it for team fights, where it's really needed. ** If used at mid or low health, it can bait the enemy and make him over-commit to killing you. It has nice synergy with , getting extra armor and making the item's passive more useful. * can jungle effectively with and , ganking with and . can be used for killing stronger monsters without losing much health, but you are more vulnerable to ganks when it is on cooldown. Careful if the enemy counter-jungles. ** At level 2 is extremely potent at ganking combining with to deal massive damage, although he should continue to jungle until level 3 for the stun from . * In 3v3, there can be a lot of fighting even before minions come. is good for getting an early first blood, since you can use it both for dodging and stunning the enemy. It can also help you solo top, especially against champions who depend on autoattacks. You should max though; you can use it many times in a longer fight and it helps you heavily with jungling and killing . * While playing against a or , you can dodge their ultimates with your ; it might save you from a gank or team fight. * Be patient with . Often the opposing team will focus you down due to your high damage output. If you are having a bad game, just focus on gaining gold through minion kills, kills and assists, and jungling. Once you get the items you need, you will be much harder to kill. * Be careful in team fights as is a high priority target for the enemy team due to his high damage output and squishiness. is reliant on his team to support him so make sure that you are on a team with initiation and hard CC and that you are at most the third person to enter the fight, behind your tank and off-tank. Try to save to escape when getting focused, rather than to engage on an opponent. * When reaching level 6, can become a strong lane zoner. Try hit a minion twice and then quickly use into an enemy champion and attack him or her with third attack to proc passive. You may also activate to maximize your damage output. However, pay attention to your mana pool. Build usage *Even with his fairly high base stats, as a carry is very item dependent for his damage output and survivability, being able to obtain gold from any source and building the best items at the most opportune time is crucial to his mid and late game. * is one of very few champions that can be itemized for attack damage, magic damage, or both. Keep in mind that not going hybrid doesn't take advantage of a lot of kit and will leave lacking either some armor or magic resistance on his active. ** Because of his active, it is optimal to build him 100% glass cannon with a mixture of attack damage and magic damage. If needs a tanky item, the item should at least give some offensive stats. ** Consider buying as it provides health and the passive enables to stick on his targets. * in particular provides everything that needs: attack damage and ability power for chewing through health (and by extension, armor and magic resist with ), life steal and spell vamp for sustainability, and a ranged slow active that considerably helps chasing. ** Spell vamp procs on all of abilities, , , and even the passive on , healing on every third strike. * A with and allows to deal a massive amount of damage in quick succession. Although will not proc , it will proc and leave close to the enemy and ready to land a normal attack which will in turn proc . This all happens very fast, making it a good way to harass or burst down a target. If you find this efficient, consider a in a build with more ability power and in other cases. ** If you choose to invest strongly in ability power, is a great choice. cooldown is very low on its higher levels, allowing frequent use of passive. ** Combine with to further decrease all of cooldowns, especially , and get some extra ability power and attack speed. * The -enchantment is an effective jungling option for . He can take monsters down at lightning speed by procing the bonus damage from it with . Combined with the he can gank and duel extremely efficently, due to the reduced damage received and on-hit true damage dealt after smiting his target. * Attack speed is fairly important on . He should have at least one item that provides it to coincide with his . Consider purchasing , , , or . ** synergizes with his passive and offers a good source of mixed damage. Consider this item in an offensive hybrid build, and remember than you can start stacking it by using abilities, especially if you engage on an enemy with , , and all at once. In a hybrid build, it is a solid third item after boots and . ** is a good pick on for the ability power, cooldown reduction, and attack speed without waiting for the stacking of or his passive. If you value any of those stats over the additional ability power and attack damage of , choose over . Of course, you could get both as they are rather cheap for what they give. ** A is most appropriate in a full attack damage build. ** The attack speed of does not make it an offensive item and is mostly for the magic resistance. As is mostly an offensive champion, could probably be replaced with a more useful offensive item. ** Keep in mind that Jax only needs 234.2% bonus attack speed at lvl18 to reach the 2.5 cap. His passive (full stack) will reduce it to 150%. * Because a large amount of damage comes from the passive on and , a full ability power build with a little attack speed is acceptable on . Doing so would be ignoring his inherent hybrid balance with his abilities' attack damage and ability power ratios. ** The magic penetration of can effectively increase the damage of and the passive of . However because is very susceptible to CC so is a more balanced choice. Use only if you don't expect much crowd control. ** would easily make up for the lack of armor from in an ability power build. ** ability power should eventually surpass 200% of his base attack damage making a better choice than for the passive. You might still have to find other items to make up for all the other stats that gives. Think about pairing with , , and . * If you find squishy and are looking for an item that offers both armor, magic resistance, and is rather cheap, consider a . Once enemies see a on a , they'll have to really consider whether or not they want to focus him rather than some other squishy target. should only be considered after completing the core damage build though. * With , consider taking a or to further increase your damage while keeping your prey slowed. ** , besides being 400 gold cheaper, procs on all of abilities, including the third hit from , making it fairly reliable at slowing enemies down. However, a provides a stronger slow for . *** If a or is built first, consider building as the item's passive also procs with 's passive and all of his other abilities and syngerizes well with the built in slow. * Consider hybrid offense-defense items such as or . ** active effect gives some extra armor and magic resist based on his attack damage and ability power. Thus, building fully offensive is an option. * A strongly amplifies Jax's damage for second output thanks to the item's passive and the built in attack speed which synergizes with his . It also has a nice active which allows Jax to chase down enemies. * Consider , , , and . The various sources of damage (crit, on hit magic damage (Muramana usually hits for around ~110 at level 18's max 1800 mana for 16 autoattacks), sheen procs, gunblade's active) will make for a potent burst, as well as giving good offensive stats that specialize in attack speed (good luck getting the gold required). If you have experience with , consider playing Jax as a more bursty anti-carry. **This build can be shrunk down to an intermediate level by building vamp scepter, Hextech revolver, tear/zeal, sheen, boots and chain vest. ** Also consider building due to Jax's basic attack and on-hit nature of his kit. The items adds cooldown to his kit, the life steal adds some sustain, and it's passive will allow Jax to restore his mana with just basic attacks. *Consider as an early item on Jax. The increase movespeed on hit helps him stick to targets very well, as well as health and attack damage. It also builds into , a strong item on Jax. Advanced techniques of Phage include: **When ganking as a jungler, smite a minion to instantly gain 60 movespeed, you can use this to catch up to your target and use your -> combo to stun the enemy. **When escaping a gank, you can kill or hit a minion to gain 20 or 60 movespeed to get out of that gank. If necessary, you can also -> Leap Strike an enemy minion to both gain some distance and acquire 60 movespeed if you killed it. This can also be used on small jungle monsters. Recommended builds Runes and Masteries * Being that is a mainly offensive champion, he is probably best with offensive masteries. Offensive masteries (21/9/0) are seemly better for his damage and with defensive masteries (9/21/0) there is a noticeable decline in his damage while not providing the survivability that one would expect. * A rune page of attack damage and ability power per level can give a powerful scaling amount of bonus damage on all of his abilities, or a flat attack damage and ability power rune page can give a massive burst of damage on and for laning, leading to an advantage over the opposition during the early and mid-phase of the game. This is especially useful for shorter games, such as those on the Twisted Treeline. * Jax can also make use of attack speed runes effectively as they improve both his physical damage (in basic attacks) and magic damage ( third hit). Countering * Try to shut down early in the game because once he hits level 6 and obtains , he becomes increasingly hard to fight 1v1. Ganks from the jungle and zoning him can make him under-farmed and under-leveled, delaying his items and scaling. Although is very strong at late game, he is fairly weak early without sustain. ** Champions with strong early game power, such as , , , , and can zone out and greatly delay 's late game dueling potential. ** Alternatively, try to fight when his active is on cooldown. * primarily deals physical damage. Concentrate on armor items to counter it, especially items that slow his attack speed. ** and are the only two items that slow attack speed, but they both also have high amounts of armor. Where the latter is generally reserved for tanks, the former is viable for a larger variety of champions, thanks to the CDR and high amount of mana. * can also deal a fair amount of magic damage and, if he builds any spell vamp, it could be his source of sustain. Magic resistance can go a long way to counter that. * Most item builds involve him building mostly glass cannon due to the fact that his offensive stats will grant him defensive stats with active. Consider focusing him down first in teamfights. ** However, he can also easily get away building defensive items that grant him offensive stats such as , , and * Remember that is a melee fighter with only one ranged gap closing ability, and a heavy reliance on staying in attack range to keep his passive, , stacked. Any crowd control to disengage after his or simply staying out of range can nullify his only engage. * Try not to let stack up his passive before he engages on you. You probably can't compete with 84% attack speed. * mainly combos his gap-closer along with . If you have an escape or a gap-closer on your own, you can use it after he closed the gap with you to escape his stun. * relies on getting close to his foe to land a stun. Try keeping a safe distance for a few seconds after he uses his . * Focusing when his goes on cooldown is one of the best ways of getting rid of him. But since he is one of the best duelists in the game due to and the high AD and AP ratios he has on his single-targeted abilities, try to not to fight him alone and outnumber him. * When he activates , avoid grouping around or being close to another teammate when the AoE stun activates. * Keep in mind that only allows him to dodge auto-attack, abilities will still damage him. However, note that Area of Effect abilities are still reduced. * is considered to be one of the best late-game duelist and split pusher due to his , his sustained damage through 's passive and , free defensive stats from the said 's active. Do not try to 1v1 Jax late-game unless you are certain that you can win the melee trade. ** His punish melee autoattackers, so avoid playing melee assassins and bruisers that are dependent on basic attacks such as , , , , , , , , and . **However, 's mobility is limited to , so champions with good mobility and/or crowd control can technically "duel" him through short trades and careful kiting over melee "duel" trades. , , , , and have good mobility and crowd control that will allow them to "duel" through kiting trades. Champion spotlight Category:Champion strategies